At the start of last season, Nazem Kadri put up only one point in eight games.
With the Calgary Flames struggling, the veteran centre was a regular target of criticism from both fans and local media.
All the while, he insisted he was happy with his game and the points would come. That didn’t get the pundits off his back.
In retrospect, Kadri was completely right.
He’d go on to record 74 points in the Flames’ final 74 games of the year, leading the team in scoring.
So Kadri has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to working his way through slow offensive stretches in a season.
“It’s an experience thing, it’s something I really don’t worry about,” Kadri explained. “I feel like there’s opportunities for me to find the back of the net every game, I get at least one or two pretty quality chances a game, it’s just a matter of them finding the back of the net.
“As a scoring player you want to contribute, you want to put up points, but still have had some factors on some important goals and still coming up with some big plays. It’s just something you have to stay with and experience helps a ton with that.”
The 34-year-old seems to be coming out of a bit of a cold offensive stretch right now. After picking up only two points in nine games, he has now recorded two assists in the Flames’ past two games heading into Thursday night’s matchup with the New York Rangers.
They were big assists, too. He won the faceoff on Daniil Miromanov’s game-winner against the Nashville Predators and then helped set up Rasmus Andersson’s tying goal in the third period against the New York Islanders.
And context does matter a little here, too. Despite saying Kadri has just gone through a cold stretch, he’s still second in team scoring with 10 points, behind only Andersson and even with Jonathan Huberdeau.
That’s still well off his pace from last year and Kadri has scored only once in 11 games, but as last year proved, he’s more than capable of finding a way out of this minor slump.
“Confidence is always there with Naz, you’re always going to have stretches where ‘OK I’m forcing the issue a bit’ or ‘nothing is going for me,’“ Flames head coach Ryan Huska said. “Naz is a believer in his ability and he knows if the work is there and the competitive fire and the kinda hard player he is, his points will follow. That’s kind of a byproduct of who he is.
“When Naz is at his best, he’s fiery and he’s involved and he’s a little bit edgy, his offence follows.”
Kadri is far from the only Flames forward who is a little snake-bitten around the net right now. They haven’t scored more than three goals in a game all month, although they’re still finding ways to win games and pick up points.
There’s no question they want to score more, though.
Heading into Thursday’s game, last year’s leading goal-scorer, Yegor Sharangovich, has potted only two in 12 games. Connor Zary has been creating plenty of chances, but has only one goal in 16 games.
After scoring 14 goals in 29 games after the Flames acquired him last year from the Vancouver Canucks, Andrei Kuzmenko has only one in 19 games so far this season.
Getting those guys going is imperative to the Flames keeping up their current pace and staying in the playoff mix.
Kadri believes the goals are coming.
“You don’t know, it’s funny when you’re in those scoring funks, you don’t really know how long they’re going to last for,” Kadri said. “The challenge is to continue to kind of stick with the process and understand you’re getting chances and getting looks. Puck luck is a real thing, it’s real.
“We’ve got some great opportunities, it’s just a matter of getting some puck luck and the puck finding the back of the net. We know we can score, we just have to stay with it.
“On a positive note, they might not be coming in volume but we score some clutch goals at clutch times and that might be even more important.”